TPK's and DM saves... Do you or Don't you?


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Liberty's Edge

That's a contradiction in terms. A story can't be DM driven and the PCs are protagonists - by definition the protagonist drives the story.

Sovereign Court

Actualy a writer drives the story of the protagonist. But anyway, yes, yes it can. I have been doing it like that for ten years now. My players love it. They know that they are important, but they also know that they can die. So they are careful in combat. But when you boil it down, them beating somebody who could lay waste to entire villages is pretty damn heroic, never mind the fact that the players have killed the BBEG by being careful and having good tactics. In the eyes of the people, they are big damn heroes.
Heroics you speak of mean people will die because they fight carelessly.

Being a hero doesn't mean jumping from rooftops onto carriages or jumping down a dragons throat. It means saving lives, sacrificing yourself for the greater good, persevering through advercity, going above yourself.

Liberty's Edge

Hama wrote:
Actualy a writer drives the story of the protagonist.

Um, no. That's ridiculous.


Gailbraithe wrote:
Hama wrote:
Actualy a writer drives the story of the protagonist.
Um, no. That's ridiculous.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

The protagonist is a fictitious character. He or she requires a person at a pen, typewriter, or keyboard to create his or her story.

Shadow Lodge

I ran a Forgotten Realms game where the party showed up for their reward, only to have the king ask who they were. The original party went into a forest, and half of them died. Replacements came along, then the other half of the original party died. Replacements show up, half the party dies. Replacements show up, and complete the quest. Just enough people survived each time to pass the quest on to the new people before they died.

In general I try to avoid killing off the party, but I also don't fudge very much. My players have told me repeatedly that the risk of dying increases their sense of accomplishment.

The most brutal campaign I've run yet has been Shackled City. I think I had 3 or 4 TPKs on that one. My party to this day assumes all of the commoners are level 20 monks in order to have the saves and hit points necessary to survive that town.

The only TPK I caused by accident was a sorcerer with fly cast, quickened cone of cold, chain lightning, and 3.0 haste on himself, plus the initiative after the surprise round. We just rewound the adventure and had the party try again.

Silver Crusade

Kirth Gersen wrote:
Gailbraithe wrote:
Hama wrote:
Actualy a writer drives the story of the protagonist.
Um, no. That's ridiculous.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

The protagonist is a fictitious character. He or she requires a person at a pen, typewriter, or keyboard to create his or her story.

NOOO ! Harry Potter is real !

*Cries in a corner*

Sovereign Court

Maxximilius wrote:
Kirth Gersen wrote:
Gailbraithe wrote:
Hama wrote:
Actualy a writer drives the story of the protagonist.
Um, no. That's ridiculous.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

The protagonist is a fictitious character. He or she requires a person at a pen, typewriter, or keyboard to create his or her story.

NOOO ! Harry Potter is real !

*Cries in a corner*

Of course He is, no need to cry, here have a cookie.


Tilnar wrote:

Oh, so then you only do it once? The party has a limited use get out of jail free card? Or do you do it.. just this once.... Oh, well, and maybe this other time.... oh, and...

I do it when I feel the story will be better if I do. If it's appropriate that the hero die a tragic death, so be it. But if the very next encounter involves that particular PC finding his long-lost sister and he dies only because of bad dice, then yes. Fudge away.

As far as the "where does it end" concept, I often here this argument for many things, and the reality is it doesn't hold water. Weird Al says it best: "you start out stealing songs, Then you’re robbing liquor stores
And selling Crack, And running over school kids with your car."

A slight infraction of the rules for judicious reasoning is NOT the same as allowing constant infractions to the point of absurdity. It stops, in short, when reason says it's a bad idea. Humanity has gotten by applying reason to law for thousands of years. It works in an RPG, too.

Liberty's Edge

Kirth Gersen wrote:
Gailbraithe wrote:
Hama wrote:
Actualy a writer drives the story of the protagonist.
Um, no. That's ridiculous.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

The protagonist is a fictitious character. He or she requires a person at a pen, typewriter, or keyboard to create his or her story.

Yes, a writer creates the story - but he doesn't DRIVE the story. What drives a story is the goals and desires of the protagonist. Saying the writer drives the story indicates that one doesn't understand the terminology being used.

Sovereign Court

Gailbraithe wrote:
Kirth Gersen wrote:
Gailbraithe wrote:
Hama wrote:
Actualy a writer drives the story of the protagonist.
Um, no. That's ridiculous.

????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

The protagonist is a fictitious character. He or she requires a person at a pen, typewriter, or keyboard to create his or her story.
Yes, a writer creates the story - but he doesn't DRIVE the story. What drives a story is the goals and desires of the protagonist. Saying the writer drives the story indicates that one doesn't understand the terminology being used.

Without the writer, there is no story.

Without the GM there is no game.

The story may be centered around the protagonist and his fate, but it is the writer who decides what happens and when and how. So, yes, the writer drives the story.

A GM doesn't have as much freedom as a writer, because his protagonists are partially being written by other people, but it is still him who drives the story as he decides when and partially how things happen in his game.

Liberty's Edge

And again, if you think the writer drives the story, then you don't understand the terminology you're using. The writer doesn't appear INSIDE the story, and thus can't be driving the story.

Sovereign Court

Gailbraithe wrote:
And again, if you think the writer drives the story, then you don't understand the terminology you're using. The writer doesn't appear INSIDE the story, and thus can't be driving the story.

Maybe, but that comes from the fact that English is not my first language. What i mean to say is that the writer determines the course of the story, not the protagonist, and to a lesser extent that is what a GM does also.

RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32

I removed some posts and I suggest everyone take a minute to cool off.

Liberty's Edge

Hama wrote:
Gailbraithe wrote:
And again, if you think the writer drives the story, then you don't understand the terminology you're using. The writer doesn't appear INSIDE the story, and thus can't be driving the story.
Maybe, but that comes from the fact that English is not my first language. What i mean to say is that the writer determines the course of the story, not the protagonist, and to a lesser extent that is what a GM does also.

More likely it comes from the fact that I've got a certificate in fiction writing from the university of Washington and you don't have formal training.

But your still undermining your own argument. If the DM is deciding what happens, then its the DM's story - not the players.


wow i mean fricking wow did we just see a huge page long post arguing about starwars! i am so impressed and saddened st the same time.

a few things.
My opinion only
1. if you kill your whole party because they failed to read your mind (12 hippogriffs) that is being a bad dm.

2.has a charcater you need that chance to fail but also that chance to win you are a hero not farmer tom. so if you jump off bridge to land on traveling coach hells yeah! you should get a chance to fail it and part of the fun is failing and failing spectacular ways. if you miss your save you don't have to be mangled beyond repair but just fall off the a carriage. but if you biff it and biff it well a dm should make the fail as spectacular as possible so much in fact it is still talked about to thisday.. it is crap that a character can't die.
to this day i still get crap from my friends about the way that a character walked into a room and fell into a pit of lava. he said i am just walking into the room he never said he was looking down. he got 2 saves, a reflex to stop himself from falling and a second reflex save to grab a rope hanging there. he failed both. has a gm i realized i was being kinda jerk with him falling so i gave him the saves but because he was not perfect he failed. so he died it would of been no fun if he had succeeded. I am sure that every ranger in his heart is gaygolis but he is realistically not going to shoot every body through the eye with every arrow. in dnd he will fail that is what the rules are for. infact in 3.5 they released a whole book about it called the dungeon masters guide part two.

3. i agree with the whole idea of cowardly players it gets tedious them poking every dang door with a 10 foot pole and if ther is a pool of lave casting every spell or trying every thing they have to get it to do some thing sometimes lava is just lave and a door is just a door. there is a difference between being a coward and a cautious character. those pc's that take up all the game time can really slow the party down. but if every floor holds a trap and every door is a crossbow bolt the game is no longer fun.

Grand Lodge

Gailbraithe wrote:
No, Lilith. In 20+ years of gaming I've never seen running away WORK as a tactic.

We had a situation where we were facing a room with a couple of beholders and several shadow dragons. the lead fighter got turned to stone in the first phase. I dimension doored the both of us out and the others used other means they had to book quickly. Running away can work, but you have to decide early... and you can't equivocate.


think about when you played baldurs gate or icewind dale can you remember a time when you didn't get tpk'd hell that gnoll fortress was hard because the game followed the rules to the letter and every gnoll was a killing machine and one bad roll can end you. I think that is why we have dm's they are the people who decide if the rules should work or be fudged. other wise you get angry throw a lamp hit your 75 year old grandfather he dies you go to jail and the judge refuses to hear the "gnoll defense" as a valid way to explain your crimes.

Sovereign Court

Lobolusk wrote:


3. i agree with the whole idea of cowardly players it gets tedious them poking every dang door with a 10 foot pole and if ther is a pool of lave casting every spell or trying every thing they have to get it to do some thing sometimes lava is just lave and a door is just a door. there is a difference between being a coward and a cautious character. those pc's that take up all the game time can really slow...

Actualy it means being a paranoid freak. A cautious character will most certainly examine every door he deems trapped.

Gailbraithe wrote:

More likely it comes from the fact that I've got a certificate in fiction writing from the university of Washington and you don't have formal training.

But your still undermining your own argument. If the DM is deciding what happens, then its the DM's story - not the players.

First of all, you have no idea what kind of training, formal or informal i had. So don't get all high an mighty about your skills and knowledge. Nobody here does that anyway.

Second, i have long ago learned that certificates and university degrees mean squat. Some of the most competent people in my field (chemistry) barely passed college by the skin of their teeth. And the people who sailed through college getting straight As are now in an unemployment line.

It always is the DMs story, with PCs as protagonists.


Hama wrote:
First of all, you have no idea what kind of training, formal or informal i had. So don't get all high an mighty about your skills and knowledge. Nobody here does that anyway.

P.S. You haven't talked with Gailbraithe before? He'll just keep doing that more and more until houstonderek comes back (or someone else picks up the ball) and goads him into getting banned again.

Sovereign Court

Kirth Gersen wrote:
Hama wrote:
First of all, you have no idea what kind of training, formal or informal i had. So don't get all high an mighty about your skills and knowledge. Nobody here does that anyway.
P.S. You haven't talked with Gailbraithe before? He'll just keep doing that more and more until houstonderek comes back (or someone else picks up the ball) and goads him into getting banned again.

I haven't had the honor. I assume this is the usual way he tries to win people over?


Hama wrote:
I haven't had the honor. I assume this is the usual way he tries to win people over?
Gailbraithe wrote:

Wow, look everyone, mindless stupidity from one of this site's many mindlessly stupid conservatives. One of the MOST mindlessly stupid of them in fact.

Oh whats that? You can't? You're a moron? You're an ignorant jackass who just spews mindless nonsense and is incapable of producing rational arguments? Sorry! I guess this what happens when we let any half-wit have an opinion on politics.

Come one a!!$&@+, you got anything other than stupid snark to back up any of your crap? Of course not, because you;re an idiot and you're full of s~%~.

Dark Archive

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

I haven't read the thread but to answer the OP. For the most part I would say no. I only intervene when the TPK is the result of my screw up. Like forgetting about the party ability to get pass DR of a certain creature where it is much harder than it should be. Or I just design a bad encounter and I forgot to take into account some things that lead to a TPK by no fault of the players. In those rare cases I will fudge to keep it from being a TPK, but that's the only time I do personally.


Gailbraithe wrote:
Kirth Gersen wrote:
Hama wrote:
First of all, you have no idea what kind of training, formal or informal i had. So don't get all high an mighty about your skills and knowledge. Nobody here does that anyway.
P.S. You haven't talked with Gailbraithe before? He'll just keep doing that more and more until houstonderek comes back (or someone else picks up the ball) and goads him into getting banned again.

An interesting claim since I've never been banned.

I don't know why Hamas took offense to my comment, since there was nothing insulting about it, but I do always find it funny when people automatically discount a formal education because they don't have one...

a little off topic we get it. people don't see eye to eye can we focus ont he topic not on formal education or non formal education lets go back to talking about, ....starwars or cookies/.......or maybe tpk's?


speaking about tpk's i once had a buddy get mad at another player and slap him! in game he rolled a critical and he was instantly killed by a "b" slap! that is the good stuff.


Ironically, I'd say BOTH Hama and Gailbraithe are right in this argument. And both wrong.

Neither DM OR Players have TRUE control of the story.

The DM is the one who is writing it, it's his baby... He comes up with the plot, and puts all the time into it.

That said, IF he was the TRUE force behind the story, the Players wouldn't be able to completely Derail the story with a poor decision.

One of my favorite quotes I read somewhere... (probably knights of the Dinner table...)

Quote:

"Hey Look!!! This must be the entrance to the dungeon the Dm's spent months building...

...

...

Let's see what's down the road..."

If the Dm was TRULY driving the story then the players would be railroaded into anything the Dm wanted. but the REALLY fun games I've been all were based with Character goals and plans in mind and story hooks built around the characters. Truly symbiotic. The DM uses the players to drive the story, and naturally the Players are NOTHING without a good DM.

On a side note, about the whole 'Who is the hero of the story' comments... I'd point out that not ALL the heroes who Succeed the quest, are the same ones that started it.

Prior to the Death star escape, Obi Wan was the hero of the show... Luke was a sidekick. All the heroes of Helm's Deep didn't show up in the shire... Obviously they were late to the game. Aragorn joining up in a tavern on the way... The others joining in at the council meeting... Aragorn gets to be the king at the end. Kind of a poke in the eye to the other three hobbits who were there from the beginning....

That said, I see this thread tumbling into about three or more arguments. So I'll clarify MY position...

1) I have no problem with the occassional character death.

2) I don't believe TPK does ANYTHING for the game, except END it.

3) Running is not a viable option. (Unless your high enough level that you have magic pouring out your ears with teleports and dimension doors..)

4) If an ally is cut in half dead... He can be left behind. If he's at -1 through -10, Leave no man behind....

Shadow Lodge

Pretty sure if we don't get on topic again this thread will be TPK...


Trying to get this back to the original topic, as Phantom and Balodek above me have so valiantly done, I definitely fall on the "softer" end of the DM spectrum. I don't like killing individual characters, much less the whole party. I don't like it for several reasons. (1) My players are invested in their characters and if the character dies, they will be sad, (2) I am invested in the characters too! If they die, I'll be sad as well, and (3) I run campaigns where things are pretty open prior to the characters acting, so if the characters die then the story generally ends.

That said, I can absolutely understand where people would think that my style would lead to players not fearing for their characters lives, but I think I have come up with a way of handling it.

When I first started running, I'd throw big encounters at the party over and over again (CR=APL+2 or higher), and eventually I would miscalculate, and they'd all die. And then everyone would be sad. I could fudge the numbers, but people quickly realized when that would happen. "Wait... so rolling a 12 hits them now...? But I rolled five twelves in a row earlier and you said they missed..., etc."

So now I try and avoid the "big" fights like the plague, and instead just throw a whole bunch of little fights at them. For a party of lvl 5s I was running for this past week, for example, they were fighting goblins. Goblins! If I needed someone scary I'd throw in a hobgoblin or bugbear. The big boss was a goblin with 2 levels of cleric and an ogre sidekick. The point is that rather than messing with die-rolls mid combat, I could do the much more opaque fudging of just knocking a few goblins off the next encounter if I felt it was going to kill them for stupid reasons. The players think that they always just barely managed to scrape by. They actually complain that they fear for their lives too much!

I also am not afraid to bring the whole party below zero HP, I just always try and make sure that there is something to be done to get them back. Like someone many posts before was talking about ransoms, the party likes to take people prisoners and torture them for information. So if they get knocked below zero by a group of CE baddies, you know that is going to happen to them too.

In a previous campaign they took on the mob and lost horribly in the first encounter (I told them before provoking the fight that it would end in their deaths, but they went into it, guns blazing, anyways). Now I could have just killed them, but instead the mob boss decided to enslave the party, and now they had to figure out a way to defeat the mob boss while also being bound by oath magic to obey him.

If they all go under to an ooze, though... well, then they're pretty SOL.

I also try and be very open with my players. I've found I get the best results when we all talk about things as players first rather than trying to prove a point as characters. If they are playing too recklessly, I'll pause the game and let them know my concerns. If they think I am mollycoddling them, they'll talk to me after the session about it. If there is a TPK, we stop, usually before everyone dies, but after it becomes obvious that that is where things are headed. Then we play a quick board game or something unrelated, then come back and talk about the encounter. If they want to rewind I let them. If they want to let it stand as is, I let them. Often times, the distance that that time has given us will give me or them the critical space necessary to find a satisfactory (dramatically and emotionally) way out.

+++

I'm hoping this will not draw me into the flame wars, even as I know that it will, but as a general rule of thumb, pointing out your RL credentials on a message board is pretty meaningless. If your words can't carry your point, then claiming to have outside experience won't help either. I have absolutely no means of verifying what you said, and so at best it comes of as petulant and desperate.

Also, it is entirely possible (though admittedly unlikely) that two different people will have different preferences for a game as open-ended in play styles as Pathfinder. I like running sandbox games. You might hate them. Doesn't mean I'm wrong; doesn't mean you're wrong. All it means is that I like running sandbox games, and you hate them.

Shadow Lodge

Bascaria wrote:


When I first started running, I'd throw big encounters at the party over and over again (CR=APL+2 or higher), and eventually I would miscalculate, and they'd all die. And then everyone would be sad. I could fudge the numbers, but people quickly realized when that would happen. "Wait... so rolling a 12 hits them now...? But I rolled five twelves in a row earlier and you said they missed..., etc."

I've had to use this in a couple of fights where it just wasn't going well for the party or I miscalculate the CR. A buffed up cleric went from taking on all 7 (or 8) players to missing 4 of 5 hits 4 rounds in a row. Obvious, yes. Necessary to save the party, yes.

As a general rule I hate running the game as if it's me vs. the players. I'm there to tell a story, to let them experience a world through my interpretation of their actions. If I wanted to kill them over and over we'd just play HeroQuest or SpaceHulk.

Sovereign Court

@ Gailbrathe

I have studied fiction writing formally for two years and then i dropped out because of disagreement with two professors, a conflict that i am not really proud of or willing to talk about. I have studied it in Serbian language, because i am from from Serbia. I may not have graduated, but i know what i talk about at least half the time.

Anyway, enough of that. Back on topic.


Hama wrote:

@ Gailbrathe

I have studied fiction writing formally for two years and then i dropped out because of disagreement with two professors, a conflict that i am not really proud of or willing to talk about. I have studied it in Serbian language, because i am from from Serbia. I may not have graduated, but i know what i talk about at least half the time.

Anyway, enough of that. Back on topic.

been thinking about it and i have come to this conclusion

1. a individual character dying is fine by me.
2. a tpk is okay in some circumstances (bad rolls or good rolls)
but it should be avoided unless absolutely needed

also i think arguing about who's diploma is meaningless i my self have a phd in being awesome from oxford ....go a head prove me wrong.

Liberty's Edge

phantom1592 wrote:
If the Dm was TRULY driving the story then the players would be railroaded into anything the Dm wanted. but the REALLY fun games I've been all were based with Character goals and plans in mind and story hooks built around the characters. Truly symbiotic. The DM uses the players to drive the story, and naturally the Players are NOTHING without a good DM.

Yeah, this 100%. In the best campaigns I've run and played in it was the players driving the story, with the DM providing the setting and throwing up challenges in the path of the character's achieving their goals.

And that style of play, which does not require immortal characters, or any of the other insulting disparagements that have been made, does generally require some amount of GM fudging and GM fiat.

Because some times that dire rat you threw in their path in order to use up some resources/farm some XP manages to kill the PC who is currently got his hand's on the campaigns reigns and providing it direction, and it's deeply unsatisfying to both players and DM to have a campaign you've been working on for some time and are heavily invested in suddenly end because of a string of statistically improbable die rolls.

It's like the campaign I was talking about earlier, where the PC whose personal quest had become the whole party's motivation. That campaign ended because of a fluke. After that session I sat down and did the math, and the probability of the dice coming up the way they did was about 1 in 6000. Is it really more fun to have a campaign end during an XP farming random encounter because of a 1 in 6000 chance die roll? Of course not, and if I had rolled behind the screen, it wouldn't have been a maximum damage critical hit - I would have fudged it down to a regular hit for standard damage, leaving that PC unconscious, bleeding but still alive.

Or try to imagine an alternate version of Star Wars, where Luke is the first casualty of Red Squadron's Death Star run and suddenly Wedge is the main character and saves the day by blowing up the Death Star with his computer-assisted photon torpedoes. It wouldn't be the definitive movie of a generation, it would be some rubbish 70's crap that only die-hard sci-fi fans remember. You'd walk out of it wondering why they had all that set-up about Luke and the Force and Vader killing his father and then resolved the story in such an awkward and unsatisfying way.

Quote:
On a side note, about the whole 'Who is the hero of the story' comments... I'd point out that not ALL the heroes who Succeed the quest, are the same ones that started it.

That works in fiction much better than it does in an RPG. How would you feel I were the DM and you, Kirth and Hama were my players, and I started the campaign by saying "This campaign is all about Hama's character's quest to avenge his father, so the rest of your characters are disposable and might die just to teach Hama a lesson."

I'm guessing you'd think that wasn't very fair at all. And you'd be right.

Quote:
Prior to the Death star escape, Obi Wan was the hero of the show... Luke was a sidekick.

No, Luke was always the hero. Obi Wan is an NPC. He exists to a) give Luke the mission, b) give Luke a magic sword and c) provide exposition. Obi Wan is a straight up Mentor archetype, and in the Campbellian heroic myth the mentor usually dies at the end of the first act, since the hero doesn't need him any more.

Liberty's Edge

Lobolusk wrote:
also i think arguing about who's diploma is meaningless i my self have a phd in being awesome from oxford ....go a head prove me wrong.

Check it out for yourself, if you don't believe me.


rando1000 wrote:
Tilnar wrote:

Oh, so then you only do it once? The party has a limited use get out of jail free card? Or do you do it.. just this once.... Oh, well, and maybe this other time.... oh, and...

I do it when I feel the story will be better if I do. If it's appropriate that the hero die a tragic death, so be it. But if the very next encounter involves that particular PC finding his long-lost sister and he dies only because of bad dice, then yes. Fudge away.

As far as the "where does it end" concept, I often here this argument for many things, and the reality is it doesn't hold water. Weird Al says it best: "you start out stealing songs, Then you’re robbing liquor stores
And selling Crack, And running over school kids with your car."

A slight infraction of the rules for judicious reasoning is NOT the same as allowing constant infractions to the point of absurdity. It stops, in short, when reason says it's a bad idea. Humanity has gotten by applying reason to law for thousands of years. It works in an RPG, too.

You misunderstand -- I'm not attempting to generate a slippery slope argument -- those are, indeed, quite fallacious....

I'm literally asking when you stop -- as you implied that you don't do it all the time, so when is it "special" enough? Or, based on what you said here -- when is a character special enough?

If a character is trying to save their long-lost sister who they've never met, can they just charge headlong into the dragon and its minions because it's more "dramatic" if he meets her, and is therefore safe?

If a character, say, found a locket in the middle of the evil nasty lair of doom with a lock of hair and the picture of a little girl and dedicates himself to finding that girl, if only to give her the locket -- is he now immune to death until he finds her because he's got something "interesting" going on?

I'm really curious about this -- obviously, from your statement, you don't think it's ok to do this all the time (presumably for something akin to the no challenge = no fun reasoning I was using above, though I may be mistaken on that) -- so what makes it ok *sometimes* and not others?

RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32

I removed more posts.

Don't make it personal. Don't post angry. Don't be a jerk.

Really. Walk away. Take a nap. Go make a snack. Whatever you need to do.

Liberty's Edge

Ross Byers wrote:

I removed more posts.

Don't make it personal. Don't post angry. Don't be a jerk.

Really. Walk away. Take a nap. Go make a snack. Whatever you need to do.

Wait, what? Are you serious Ross? You delete my posts responding to Kirth's clear and obvious flame-baiting, but you don't remove the flame-baiting?

Kirth's reposting of a three year old comment from the politics forum in this thread is pretty blatant and obvious violation of the "Do not defame, abuse, stalk, harass, or threaten others;" policy, and you're just going to let that stand?

Can you at least PRETEND to be fair?

Dark Archive

Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber

Gailbraithe if you think a post is in the wrong you should flag it, that's what the flagging is for. Making a post like your last one isn't going to help.


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Gailbraithe wrote:
No, Luke was always the hero. Obi Wan is an NPC. He exists to a) give Luke the mission, b) give Luke a magic sword and c) provide exposition. Obi Wan is a straight up Mentor archetype, and in the Campbellian heroic myth the mentor usually dies at the end of the first act, since the hero doesn't need him any more.

Undoubtably that's the way it was intended.

However since the Prequels came out, i now see luke in a MUCH diminshed role. NOW the saga of Star Wars is all about Obi wan.

(ep 1) Obi wan passes his tests, becomes a master, takes a student.

(Ep2) Obi Wan trains his student... and fails.

(Ep3) Obi Wan's failure gives rise to Darth Vader and the fall of the Jedi Knights.

(Ep4)Obi wan Trains his students' son to continue where vader failed. Dies trying.

(Ep5 and Ep6) Obi wan's last student must overcome his First Student and correct all the wrongs that Obi wan caused....

It quickly became less Rise and fall of Vader, then it did Obi wan correcting his failings...

i would still see Obi Wan as a PC much in the 'Darth's and Droids' style... HILARIOUS web-comic, http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0001.html

Seriously... check it out :)


Gailbraithe wrote:
Because some times that dire rat you threw in their path in order to use up some resources/farm some XP manages to kill the PC who is currently got his hand's on the campaigns reigns and providing it direction, and it's deeply unsatisfying to both players and DM to have a campaign you've been working on for some time and are heavily invested in suddenly end because of a string of statistically improbable die rolls.

Then make the decision to abandon the XP system and simply award levels at key milestones along the story arc of your campaign.

For me it really kills a storyline for the players to go all Meta and 'xp farm' and frankly as a GM if you are encouraging that behaviour then perhaps you might need to go back and do the next course at college.

I don't recall too much random XP grind in fantasy fiction.

We ditched the XP system and never looked back.

Sczarni

at the risk of inciting more rage on the internet:

I don't mind if the party TPK's.

Really.

In some 15 years of gaming, it's happened one (1) time: The last room of Thistletop, in PF 1 "Burnt Offerings."

We pressed on when we should have rested, and that last encounter dropped my fighter, then the paladin, and the rest of the party followed suit.

That turned out to be a GOOD thing, though.

We created new characters (ranging from a "twin brother" of the bard, to myself taking on my character's paramour Ameiko Kaijutsu), and set about making darn sure that didn't happen again.

Funnily enough, the replacement characters have been some of the most fun, interesting, and weird PCs I have seen. They are also all quite aware of their own mortality and proper dungeoneering technique.

If this were to happen, say, at 12th level or so, that may be a different story. But really, at that point, a TPK should not be likely, seeing as how so many characters have extraordinary means of escape.

A fear of death instills a desire and drive to survive, I've found. The opposite is true, as well. When players think their characters are invulnerable, they tend to do stupid things (like "I jump into the well of evil," or "I jump down onto the huge ooze and hit it with my axe." Both true stories. Both resulted in the loss of that PC.)

YMMV, of course.

Liberty's Edge

Tilnar wrote:

You misunderstand -- I'm not attempting to generate a slippery slope argument -- those are, indeed, quite fallacious....

I'm literally asking when you stop -- as you implied that you don't do it all the time, so when is it "special" enough? Or, based on what you said here -- when is a character special enough?

If a character is trying to save their long-lost sister who they've never met, can they just charge headlong into the dragon and its minions because it's more "dramatic" if he meets her, and is therefore safe?

If a character, say, found a locket in the middle of the evil nasty lair of doom with a lock of hair and the picture of a little girl and dedicates himself to finding that girl, if only to give her the locket -- is he now immune to death until he finds her because he's got something "interesting" going on?

I'm really curious about this -- obviously, from your statement, you don't think it's ok to do this all the...

It's a judgement call. There are no hard rules. It's not black and white, and its easy to make a bad call. Which is, I think, part of the appeal of letting the dice decide. If the dice determine the story, then the GM can absolve himself of responsibility for a campaign that ends in an unsatisfying way and turn the blame onto the players for not retreating, wanting to be immortal, etc.

You have to develop a feel for the involvement of your players.

Let's say you're running an adventure. The players are involved in a fight. It's a random encounter you threw at them because they're on their way to the dungeon of the archlich they've been working against the whole campaign, but you got swamped at work and didn't get the dungeon finished in time for tonight's session, so you're using delaying tactics to fill the evening.

Two of the players are barely paying attention, they're talking about last nights episode of Game of Thrones and how badass it was. Another player is off in the kitchen getting a snack while he's waiting for his round. Your fourth player doesn't have her head in the game because her college roommate was in a car crash yesterday and is now in a coma and she's distracted with worry (<-- HAPPENED TO ONE OF MY CURRENT PLAYERS).

You're rolling your dice and you score a fatal critical hit on the player with his nose in the refrigerator. Should you play it as it landed?

No, not in my opinion. The players are clearly not taking the combat seriously, they're just hacking through it because everyone "knows" they're going to win, and they "know" that tonight's session is just time-wasting.

Is this a dramatically appropriate way for this player to lose his character? He comes back from the kitchen and says "Hey, can I have some of that pie in there?" and you respond "Sure, and by the way, Rolfgar is dead. Make a new character."

That's not fun. That's just lame. Don't do that.

Judgement calls. Know your players. Gauge their level of interest at the moment. When they care about the battle, when the death is going to mean something, when the player's reaction isn't going to be "Aw, what? That was stupid." that's when its right to let that critical hit take them out.

Liberty's Edge

Dark_Mistress wrote:
Gailbraithe if you think a post is in the wrong you should flag it, that's what the flagging is for. Making a post like your last one isn't going to help.

Oh right, I always forget that forums totally favor the kind of creep who throws mud on someone and then runs for an authority figure when they fight back. I kind of hate that about forums.

Tattling isn't really my style. I don't need moderators to protect me from the consequences of my posts the way some people in this thread apparently do.

But very well, I've flagged the obvious flames that Kirth posted. I will be entirely unsurprised when Ross does nothing about them.


...Stupid forum monkeys eating posts. here is a much abbreviated (and probably better for it, though still stupidly long rehash)

Ross Byers wrote:

I removed more posts.

Don't make it personal. Don't post angry. Don't be a jerk.

Really. Walk away. Take a nap. Go make a snack. Whatever you need to do.

Thanks, Ross. Good advice.

Tilnar wrote:
Good questions

I guess for me, and again I come down on the softy-DM side of the debate, it comes down to when it would be narratively appropriate for a character to die. Admittedly, this is pretty rare, usually only during big climactic fights. It's OK that Mel Gibson died before the end of BRAVEHEART because his death spurred people on to greater heights. So if a character dying will help achieve his goals, then I let him die.

As I discussed above, though, I try and make it so that the party is always just this side of dying, but never push them over the edge. I only push when it is narratively alright. I've talked about this at length with my players and they are OK with it; it does not diminish their sense of fear or risk. Part of what allows this to be successful is that the party never really knows when a totally mundane fight will turn into a narratively critical one or when a seemingly critical fight will turn mundane, so they never know when they are under that protection. (One character recently had a mental breakdown from the constant mortal peril, brilliantly built up to by weeks of RPing from the player).

**Spoilers for my players below, please stop reading here. I'm looking at you Matthew/Marcus**

Now, of course, there will be times when the dice just aren't with the party. When that happens we pause for a bit and come back to see if there is a way out. Sometimes that way out is a rewind, sometimes it is the character dying. Sometimes it is something totally different.

For example, in one recent fight a character, Marcus, who is a diplomat and none too handy in a fight, wound up being killed by two daemons who grabbed his body and gated back to their home plane, leaving the party no way to follow them. It wasn't the plan, he was not supposed to die there, but it was the only true way to play the daemons. I miscalculated, the dice were against the party, it happens. So to the entire party, Marcus died, and that was several months ago. The player rolled up a new character and has been happily playing as him ever since.

On the side, though, it turns out that the daemons (at first just a random encounter) were emissaries of a higher lord who needed a mortal diplomat to help him resolve a dispute. The player and I have been playing that via email ever since, and I have been constantly looking forward to the moment when the triumphant Marcus rises from the dead (much harder than just a "raise dead" spell, which doesn't exist in my campaign) to rejoin his party, now with an underworld lord in his debt.

Meaningless character death thus turned into great plot point and character moment that builds on the world and helps instill a real fear of mortality in the rest of the party and builds towards a crowning moment of awesome for a non-combat character concept.

Grand Lodge

Gailbraithe wrote:
...

Just pointing out that you aren't making a very sympathetic case for yourself, and if the moderation style is not to your liking, the only thing you can do is stop posting here.


TriOmegaZero wrote:
Just pointing out that you aren't making a very sympathetic case for yourself,

Especially the posting of 'qualifications', what was THAT in aid of?

Grand Lodge

E-peen.

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